Music Diary

Saturday, May 02, 2015

David Singleton, the Vicar: in Seattle

David Singleton was in Seattle with his daughter Iona for the past four days, exploring ideas to reinvigorate his 15-year project, the Vicar.

Here’s a quick recap of the past four days:

Wednesday Evening: dinner with George Murphy, Don Meyers, Brit (Don’s wife) and Iona (David’s daughter) was a combination of rear-view reflection on BootlegTV combined with a forward looking view at what is possible and practical now for music and media creators. In 1999, when BootlegTV was born, one terabyte of storage cost ~$100K. Today, you can pick up a 1T drive for $59 at Fry’s. At that time, average consumer bandwidth was affectionately described as ‘dial up’. We shared perspectives on how much has changed. And perhaps, more interestingly: how much has not.

Thursday Evening: dinner with Steve Enstad, Curt Golden, David LaVallee, Don Meyers, and David Singleton at what used to be the Ballard Firehouse. In January of 2000, David sat in this very spot in the audience with RF for a Steve Ball Roadshow show that featured Jaxie Binder on Guitar, and Bob Williams on Bass. Dinner at what is now “Ballard Highlife” was followed by a two hour conversation (recorded) at Curt’s place about the remembered history of BootlegTV. David and I realized a few months ago that we might benefit from revisiting reflections on our shared experience in working to enable new music and media scenarios in 1999-2001. There were a number of emotional and insightful moments as we shared impressions and memories of highs, lows, characters and characteristics of the unlikely band of brothers and sisters who came together to pursue what then was an insane vision. Via conversation, we realized the immense insanity of working to build and ship the scenarios that are today covered by iTunes, YouTube, SoundCloud, and Facebook combined. I’m working to transcribe the conversation for further reflection.

Friday Evening: David presented a special evening of DGM and Vicar stories, sponsored by Amy Priore who flew up from LA with her husband to bring a bit of DGMLive to Seattle. There were numerous references to the October 19, 1990 League of Crafty Guitarists show at the Backstage (just a few blocks from this event) where David and I first met, and which set in motion > 25 years of collaborative music and craft work across the DGM family of artists.

It was also a bit surreal to see the legacy of Guitar Craft Services still living and breathing in Amy’s thriving DGM Shop.

Saturday Lunch: David and Iona joined me post-SGC morning work at Seattle Creative Arts Center for a working lunch discussion and coaching session on practical paths to increase David’s ability to focus on next steps for the Vicar. As many know, I cannot talk without drawing, so here is one of the sheets we used in the landscape analysis of David and his work with the Vicar project:

Yes, that’s soy sauce on the bottom.

Over sushi, among other topics, we discussed viral video memes, Shred videos, caption contests, calendar analysis, Travis Hartnett’s quantum ‘four hour rule’ (see the text next to the improvised Just Passing Throughhere for one quick explanation) and how the world is full of good and great art and artifacts. Therefore, it’s really only possible to get any significant attention at all if what you’re doing is extraordinary in some way.

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At 3pm, after a 15 minute phone call with Guy Whitmore about the state of interactive music, I dropped David off chez Don Meyers for final packing for his red eye flight back to England.